CHAPTER 2

Things were simpler before Felix Sterculius walked into his office. In the early days he would gaze dreamily at the law school diploma centered proudly on the wall behind his desk proclaiming to all the world that Jedediah Aaron LeBaron was qualified as an attorney and counselor at law.

LeBaron had never really set out to become a lawyer. It had just sort of happened, with the brutal inevitability that springs from inattention. He had to do something after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree, and blind momentum had carried him on through law school.

That same diploma had bided its dusty time in a dark steamer trunk immediately after law school. Emerging from the cocoon of twenty-straight years of schooling, LeBaron had ventured forth to see the world, finally settling for two years of relaxation in central Mexico. But when his savings were gone and his system had finally sweated out the poison of all those years of formal learning, he had returned to the spruce- and fir-covered hills of northern California, to the tiny town of Los Arboles, to open his own private practice.

As he had proudly watched the words "J. Aaron LeBaron, Att'y" appear in gold block letters on the window of his converted storefront office (he would have liked more, but gold leaf was going for twenty dollars a letter), he had congratulated himself on having chosen the gentle bucolic atmosphere of a rural law practice. He had wondered why anyone would wish to practice the noble profession caged in by concrete and asphalt and breathing the carbon monoxide of a larger city.

Now he knew. Big cities have clients, clients have money, and money was needed to pay the bills that kept the office open and bought food and shelter. The concept was so simple he had completely overlooked it at first. Never before had he appreciated the need to earn his daily bread, so blunted had the edge of his husbandry become from student loans and gifts from home, and so dimmed had his wits grown from a surfeit of schooling.

The romantic allure of an idyllic small town law practice in a pastoral setting had proved a cruel seduction. Now he lived with the jaded reality as with a mistress he secretly loathed, yet couldn't quite bring himself to leave. Rather than championing the worthy causes of exploited rustics, he had spent three years worrying whether someone would walk through the front door with enough money in his pocket to pay the telephone bill or with a fat enough bank account to cover the modest retainer he would require so that his secretary's paycheck wouldn't bounce. His clientele consisted chiefly of illiterate, jobless loggers, penniless for all practical purposes, and tightfisted, though lofty-minded, professors from the ivory towers of nearby Del Oro State University, who perpetually panicked in the teeth of real-world encounters and distrusted anyone who did not. Nonetheless, things were without question simpler then.

Behind the gold-lettered plate glass window he sat, poring over his latest Time magazine, to all the world busily advancing the noble profession of legal counselor and advocate. Outside a Friday afternoon languished about the sleepy town like a summer's yawn.

He was handsome in a rugged sort of way that fit his backwoods setting, with light-brown hair and piercing pale blue eyes which could unnerve a witness on cross-examination. His new suntan looked good on him.

LeBaron had just returned from ten glorious, unlawyerly days on the beach at Guymas. The MacIntyre dog-bite litigation had finally settled, and he had instantly spent every cent of the modest fee on planefare to Mexico, before he really had a chance to contemplate the soundest way to invest his temporary profit.

Now he was back, his money exchanged for a suntan, his freedom stolen by that sneak-thief time, and the rent was overdue. He yawned. "Something will turn up," he said to himself and turned another page.

LeBaron had been skirting the precipice of financial collapse for so long it had grown as familiar as an old neighborhood. Something always turned up. "And anyway," he would tell himself when despair would finally ferment into the heady wine of fatalism, which seemed to occur more and more frequently of late, "I came into town with nothing, so if I go out the same way, there's no great loss." He stretched and yawned and turned another page.

He pursued with interest an article about the growing political unrest in Guatemala. LeBaron had never actually made it as far south as Guatemala, but he had managed to spend time in Mexico each year for a number of years now, whether he could afford it or not. He was concerned, nonetheless, because what happened in Guatemala was bound to affect what happened in Mexico, and what happened in Mexico was bound to affect the security of his little "retirement fund". He still had almost $4500 in Mexican bonds salted away from the intruding eyes of the IRS. It was an investment from an earlier, happier age, now earning nearly eighty per cent interest. It wasn't much, but it was his escape route in the event the shit ever hit the fan.

So LeBaron found the article unsettling. Communist guerrillas, supplied with Russian arms by way of Cuba, were involved in a hit-and-run offensive campaign in a renewed attempt to destabilize the country. Mass uprisings and civil war loomed on the horizon. Guatemala, the report announced, was "one year away" from the kind of bloody turmoil consuming El Salvador. LeBaron would have read the entire depressing report like a bystander transfixed at the scene of a gruesome automobile accident, had his secretary not cracked the door to announce quietly that a Mr. Felix Sterculius would like to see him if he could find the time.

"Who?" asked LeBaron, closing the offensive magazine and tossing it on the table behind him.

Becky Sue slipped through the narrow opening in an undulating motion that instantly reminded LeBaron why he put up with her laggardly typing, inaccurate spelling, and mathematical ineptitude. With her dark blond hair, pretty face, and incredible figure she might have become a very successful chorus girl if anyone had bothered to tell her that there was more to the world than slopping hogs and providing secretarial services for a failing small-town lawyer.

"Felix Sterculius," she whispered. LeBaron's pulse quickened at the implied intimacy of her whisper. "He just walked in. He wouldn't tell me what it's about. Says he wants you to file a lawsuit for him."

"Well, sure, tell him I'll be with him in a minute." He watched her squeeze back through the doorway.

LeBaron had enough sense to keep a new client waiting lest he form the opinion that his new attorney had no other clients, which was too painfully close to the truth. He heaved a deep sigh and looked out the window.

LeBaron allowed his mind to wander back to the early days just after he had hired Becky Sue. He conjured up a picture of her smiling at him from the blue-striped sheets of his water bed, her firm round breasts white where her bikini had blocked out the sun. They hadn't resisted the carnal hunger which arose spontaneously at their earliest encounter. They had been marvelously compatible, from a physical standpoint, enjoying enthusiastically the pleasures of each other's body.

Afterward, though, there was never much to say. They didn't even seem to talk the same language. The smooth operation of the office had begun to deteriorate. LeBaron had learned the wisdom of the maxim: "Don't get involved with the help." Eventually he had decided to break off their sexual involvement, and they had both learned to live with the decision, though the undercurrent of erotic tension often still filled the space between them. At such times he wondered if he had made the right decision.

After a while he looked at his watch and then out the window again. Finally, he got up and asked his new client to please come in.

Felix Sterculius was tall and slim with silver-gray hair, perfectly trimmed. He was well-manicured and groomed and wore a neatly tailored, expensive charcoal pinstriped suit. His bearing was of the utmost dignity, yet light and resilient, as if he were about to serve up a tennis ball. LeBaron's first impression was that he must have come to the wrong office by mistake. But he addressed LeBaron by name, as if he had intended to see him and no one else. LeBaron asked what he could do for him.

"I would like for you to represent me," was the reply.

"I see," said LeBaron, with a show of careful consideration. "What seems to be the problem?"

"My wife is pregnant, Mr. LeBaron."

"I see," LeBaron repeated crisply, limbering up, alert for a more substantive volley.

"I would like the pregnancy terminated."

"Have you discussed this matter with your wife?"

"No," said Sterculius, looking down at his hands. "That would do no good. She is a rigid, practicing Catholic and would never consider an abortion."

Like the first hint of morning light on the eastern horizon, the suspicion began to dawn in LeBaron's mind that he had a wacko seated across from him. No wonder he had come to see LeBaron; he had probably already made the rounds and couldn't find a legitimate attorney to represent him. But LeBaron had nothing better to do, so he politely explained his understanding of the law. "I'm afraid that a husband has no cause of action in California to prevent his wife from giving birth to her child. It's her free choice. Nor, might I add," he added, suspecting a hidden motive, "does prenatal protest by the father relieve him from his law-imposed duty to support the child once it is born."

"I see." It was Sterculius' turn to reply tersely.

"Was the child conceived during wedlock?" asked LeBaron, exploring the delicate issue of paternity, which he now suspected to be the true underlying issue.

"Yes, of course. We have been married for . . . let's see . . . four . . . no, five years this April."

"Living together continuously?"

"Yes."

"And you have had sexual relations with your wife?"

"Yes, of course."

"Do you have any reason to believe that you are not the father of the child?"

"No, of course not."

LeBaron had not expected that response. He scratched his head. "Well, anyway," he continued gratuitously, "under California law you would be conclusively presumed to be the father."

"But I am the father." Sterculius hesitated, yet he obviously had more to say.

LeBaron waited, no longer certain he understood what the older man was trying to accomplish. He glanced openly at his watch to remind his client that an attorney's time is a precious commodity.

Presently Sterculius began again. "I understand in California a lawsuit can be brought on grounds known as 'wrongful life.'"

"Well, yes," answered LeBaron, the cerebral wheels whirring to determine if the statement had any relevance. Perhaps he had been too hasty. "One court recently handed down a decision suggesting that a child born with defects known to the parents during pregnancy might have a cause of action against the parents for not terminating the pregnancy."

"Yes, you see," said Sterculius, brightening. "If the child could sue after birth, why couldn't it sue before to prevent the birth?"

LeBaron sat back in his chair. "Why not indeed," he thought to himself. And his thoughts answered themselves, "Because no lawyer in his right mind would take on such a hair-brained, marginal-recovery lawsuit without requiring up front a fat enough retainer to scare off any sensible client." But he smiled at the older man and said, "I suppose it could be done, but it's a new area of law, quite unconventional, and the chances of success are remote at best."

"But there is some chance of success, is there not?"

"Well, I'm not even sure the law will permit you to represent an unborn child," LeBaron demurred. "And you have no cause of action on your own behalf." He sat back in his chair and scratched his head. He needed a polite way to terminate the interview. He attempted another serve. "When is the child due?"

Sterculius smiled, as if returning a volley he had been prepared for. "Seven months."

"You're sure she's pregnant?"

"No question about it."

LeBaron thought the matter over. He had been following the "wrongful life" cases out of pure curiosity, but had never imagined he might come this close to one. The courts had weighed the delicate question of whether nonexistence is better than impaired existence, and one court had curiously tipped the balance in favor of nonexistence. He explained his understanding of the court's opinion briefly to Sterculius. "I'm sorry to bring up a sensitive subject, but it is important to get the facts out as completely as possible at the very beginning. What precisely is the nature of the birth defect that the doctors anticipate in this case?"

"Why, none that I know of. I haven't had an opportunity to look at the medical records yet, however. The child may be perfectly normal."

LeBaron laid his pen on his yellow legal pad. Yes, indeed, he did have a wacko in his office. "Then we are not really talking about a case of potentially impaired existence, are we?"

Sterculius smiled and leaned forward in his chair as if he were about to stroke home the advantage point. He looked LeBaron straight in the eye. "Is not all existence impaired existence?"

LeBaron looked at him. A philosophical wacko. Yet there was a mad reasonableness underlying the simple statement. Too bad California law held otherwise. Or did it? Perhaps the broader question had simply never reached the higher courts. Nor would it, as far as he was concerned, without the proper financial motivation. He decided to talk turkey. "You certainly have a point Mr. Sterculius. My hourly rate is seventy-five dollars." It was only a slight exaggeration. "And while some attorneys may take a case on a contingent fee basis, your complaint seems to smack of injunctive relief rather than damages. Your suit would not generate a fund of money from which my attorney's fees might be paid. I'm afraid that I would only be able to undertake representation on a straight-time fee basis. Perhaps you will be able to work out contingent fee arrangements with some other lawyer. I wish you the best of luck." He rose and offered the older man his hand.

Sterculius pulled a wad of hundred dollar bills from an inside coat pocket and began peeling them off, one by one.

LeBaron sank slowly back into his chair in hypnotic fascination.

"Perhaps I did not make myself clear," Sterculius said, manipulating the crisp bills with the graceful fingers of a magician, "but I would like to employ your services. At your usual hourly rate, of course. Is fifteen hundred enough to get the matter started?" He laid the clean bills on the edge of the cluttered desk. They looked out of place there, like debutantes lost at a punk-rock festival.

LeBaron looked up from the neat stack to Sterculius' face, saw no hint of the tasteless joke he feared, and then down to the meager scribblings and doodles on the yellow pad in front of him. An attorney is not a judge, he thought, but an advocate, a hired gun. His job is to represent his client's interests as best he can, right or wrong, for better or for worse, in an adversary system wherein truth is ultimately attained through the resolution of conflicting claims. However, an attorney must not hold out unreasonable hopes of success, lest his client later sue him for misrepresentation.

He looked at the money once again, swallowed an internal protest, and said, "I must inform you that under the current status of California law, as I understand it--though I have yet to carefully research the problem--you have very little chance of winning such a lawsuit."

"I understand that, Mr. LeBaron. But if there is any chance of winning at all, I would like to proceed. You might say I simply want my day in court."

It was good. Too good. LeBaron was suspicious when things went too well, but he couldn't think of any plausible ulterior motive Sterculius might be concealing. Perhaps this was simply his peculiar way of humiliating his wife, rather than beating her soundly with his fists as most of LeBaron's clients would have done.

The older man smiled warmly, disarmingly. LeBaron made a note on his yellow pad to confirm to the client in a letter his painful disclosure that the lawsuit didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. Then LeBaron smiled. "I will take the case." He reached lovingly for the fifteen crisp one-hundred dollar bills. "I will have my secretary write you a receipt-"

"That won't be necessary, Mr. LeBaron. After all, if you can't trust your lawyer, who can you trust? But there is one other thing."

LeBaron's heart sank, and he set the bills down gingerly at arm's length so as not to become too attached to them. "What is that?"

"Well, Mr. LeBaron, my wife lives in Mexico-"

"Mexico!" interrupted LeBaron. "This lawsuit will have to be brought at the residence of the unborn child, which is obviously the place where the mother resides. I'm afraid I won't be able to represent you in Mex-"

"Pardon me," broke in Sterculius, laughing formally, "did I say that my wife lived in Mexico? I'm sorry. I meant to say that my wife's doctor lives in Mexico. No, she lives right here in this very county, but the pregnancy was diagnosed and some prenatal testing was done while we were on vacation in Guadalajara."

Something wasn't quite right. LeBaron had the distinct impression that Sterculius was making the whole story up just to satisfy him. A crazy notion, but he couldn't quite shake it, even though the older man's benign demeanor betrayed no sign of deception. "What is your residence address here?" LeBaron asked suspiciously.

Without the slightest hesitation Sterculius rattled off a street address in the better section of nearby Del Oro, which LeBaron jotted down on his pad.

"I also have an investigator working for me in Mexico," Sterculius continued, "an Englishman named Tewksbury. He is assembling all the necessary medical records. But here is the problem: I may need to ask you to fly to Guadalajara to make sure Tewksbury has gotten together everything that might be relevant."

LeBaron was struck dumb.

"And perhaps take a statement from the doctor," added Sterculius after a moment.

Small world, LeBaron thought. He had a strange feeling that Sterculius already knew about his frequent trips to Mexico. He finally found the composure to say, "I've spent a lot of time in Guadalajara. I lived near there for almost two years."

"No! Really? What a remarkable coincidence." The older man slapped his leg and appeared genuinely surprised. "This could help matters immensely. That is, if the trip actually becomes necessary, as I fear it will. Of course, I intend to pay all expenses, plus a per diem fee that we can agree upon. Say, $750 per day?"

"That would probably be adequate," LeBaron fought to keep from breaking into an enormous grin. At that rate, he could earn the retainer in two days of vacation, with all expenses paid. Had he finally found the golden-egg-laying goose? LeBaron didn't want to look for reasons to distrust Sterculius. "Yes, if I have enough advance notice," he said, his face a mask of seriousness, "I would probably be able to get away for a few days, anyway. Only if the case requires it, of course."

"Of course," replied Sterculius, smiling as if he had just scored the match point.

An hour later, the interview completed, LeBaron walked his new client out to his Mercedes, and shaking hands like an old friend, ended the most successful beginning of his short career. Slowly he counted out the fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills for Becky Sue to log into the receipts, but refused to give her any of the details. Instead, he sent her down the street to the local market for a bottle of cold champagne, promising the full story when she returned.

Well, well, well, things were looking up, LeBaron mused as he glanced through the four pages of detailed notes he had just taken. Then he laid them aside carefully and leaned back in his chair. Monday he would begin researching the case and draft a complaint. Today he and Becky Sue were going to celebrate. This case might even be weird enough for him to leak to the newspapers as a special interest story. He might get interviewed on local television if news were slow enough. The free advertising would be another paving stone on the road to unbridled success.

When Becky Sue returned he locked the front door and drew the blinds. Enough business for one day. He explained in splendid detail the wonderful prospects involved as he fiddled with the wire harness restraining the plastic stopper on the bottle. Pop! The stopper caromed about the office, denting the acoustic ceiling tile overhead, and the bubbling liquid foamed onto Becky Sue's desktop. They were giggling together even before they drank their first toast from stained coffee mugs. "To prosperity!" chortled LeBaron.

"To our happy office," chorused Becky Sue brightly.

They inhaled the bubbling liquid, and LeBaron refilled the cups, then lowered himself into one of the waiting chairs next to Becky Sue's desk. They laughed and joked, and a warm glow worked its way under the cares of the long week and gradually dislodged them.

"If the rest of this Sterculius money comes through," said LeBaron at length, as he grew magnanimous in the alcoholic glow of success, "there will be a modest, though appreciative bonus in this for you. In thanks for your undying allegiance through troubled times."

Becky Sue was overjoyed and proclaimed her fondest appreciation for her wonderful boss. On impulse, she bent over and kissed him affectionately on the cheek, and as she did so, her breasts lightly brushed his shoulder. As she straightened up, their eyes met, and in that overflowing instant before they each looked away in embarrassment, the shadow of an unspeakable urgency passed between them.

LeBaron awkwardly splashed the rest of the champagne into the cups. His fingers felt thick and bumbling from the alcohol, and his pulse raced, pumping exotic chemicals into his system. She too was flushed with the moment and obviously excited to be alone with him in the forbidden gap between work and weekend. The imminence of further physical contact lay palpably between them.

LeBaron stood up and lurched to the open doorway of his office.

Two-and-one-half thousand million years ago terrestrial life had blundered upon the strategy of sexual reproduction, and its subtle efficacy had been improving ever since. LeBaron glanced over his shoulder at Becky Sue and his arms and legs tingled with the desire to touch her and press her against him. Piquantly she smiled back. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets and sighed, turning to look out his office window. LeBaron had good reason to resist these insistent animal drives, after all. They had nothing in common beyond a physical craving, and their last involvement had merely disrupted the tranquility of the office. Only a fool would dare get involved with the help. He considered himself to be a creature of reason and discipline. Yet he lingered in the doorway.

Besides, Becky Sue had become engaged to a local pig-farmer named Ricky Lee Walton. True, she sometimes talked of breaking off their engagement, but love never runs smooth. The warm glow and intimacy of the moment were apparently addling her reason, however, for she stood and slowly glided over beside him. She slipped her hand under his arm and laid her head against his shoulder.

"Don't get involved with the help," a voice still cried in the recesses of his mind, but more distant than before. Reason, after all, was little more than an apology tacked on in the most recent eyeblink of evolutionary development. What chance did it have against such ancient reproductive tactics as the tingling of the skin, forgetfulness, and the rising tide of adrenaline and testosterone-laced blood swelling sweet erectile tissues.

LeBaron turned and embraced Becky Sue. He bent and kissed her yielding mouth, felt the warmth of her body pressing his. For a timeless instant they stood clinging together, craving each other, enraptured. Nature was toying with them and might have had its way if the telephone hadn't rung.

It was her fiance, Ricky Lee. He called every afternoon just after slopping the hogs. He didn't quite trust Becky Sue alone all day with her godless shyster boss.

As Becky Sue chatted nervously, LeBaron withdrew into his office and closed the door. He sat down heavily in his chair. The pile of yellow sheets lay just where he had left it. He thought of his reasonable objection to involvement with his secretary, and of his receding passion, and he smiled. Somehow choices were being made, but it was more like they were making him, than he was making them. The storm had passed for today, but he wondered what the future might hold. Perhaps another day, when things were arranged a little more favorably . . . . Distracted by the petty indulgences of the moment, LeBaron little suspected that things would never be simple for him again.